Thursday, March 23, 2017

"Glen Ford says that even if the US does prove that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections, the actions don't match the scale of America's interference in elections across the world."

(The Real News.com)

We threw out a democratically-elected Prime Minister in order to install a puppet dictator, who was such a disaster that he ushered in the era of the fanatical Ayatollah's.CIA admits role in 1953 Iranian coup
(The Guardian.com)

Afterward the CIA used that ousted dictator as a pawn in a game to fix a U.S. presidential election, ousting Carter to install the corporate puppet, Ronald Reagan, who helped usher in this era of the fanatical Alt-Right.David Rockefeller & October Surprise Case
(Robert Parry @ Consortiumnews.com)

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

MOURNING IN AMERICA, AGAIN

There's conservatives who only support the war machine and "real" Americans, folk who look and act like they do, and there's fiscal conservatives who don't care what people do as long as taxes get cut and government gets smaller, except for the war machine. These so called "fiscal conservatives" usually vote for the same money wasting douche nozzles favored by their short-sighted bigoted brethren.
I've always found that hard to figure out.

Of course as Democrats became more conservative the rationale to vote for them instead of a Republican became harder to defend, but it remains doable, historically speaking.

"When Ronald Reagan came into office in 1981, his plan included the contradictory goals of massively increasing the Pentagon’s budget, cutting income taxes substantially, and balancing the budget. However, his defense budget hikes and initial tax reductions ballooned the federal budget deficit so much, especially since proposed domestic spending cuts didn’t work out so well, that he had to raise taxes six out of eight years as president."

"As you read this article on Democrats vs Republicans when it comes to who did better or worse with the U.S. national debt, bear in mind that I am an independent voter. I cast my virgin vote for Ronald Reagan. I voted for President George II … but only the first time! After installing Bush 2.0, I repented. I refused to reboot the Bush administration and laid down my voting rights for awhile so as not to inflict more damage on America. I consoled myself by saying, “At least, I’ve learned not to do it again. I was not a hanging-chad voter.”

In fact, I’ve voted Republican more often than Democrat. I did not vote for Clinton or Al Gore. Bear all of that in mind, as you read the following, for I am writing against my own bias and was surprised by what I learned."

*********************

"There is no getting around the fact that the Republican track record for deficit spending is abysmal or that the Great Recession began for the entire world in the eighth year of their watch under George Bush II. Not only has personal income for ALL segments of the population (except the top 1%) done worse during Republican administrations over the past fifty years, but the United States’ gross debt has skyrocketed under every Republican administration from the beginning of Nixon’s second term onward. That’s a numerical fact, and their feet should be held to the fire for it. Moreover, the top five percent of the U.S. populace pays a lower percentage of income taxes in proportion to their total wealth than do the bottom ninety-five. (See “Bush Whacked by the Bush Tax Cuts.”)

So, that’s why I haven’t voted for Republicans in some time, even though Democrats currently are carrying out the same lame bailout economics that Bush began. I didn’t change the facts in the presentation above to match the way I vote. I changed the way I vote to match the facts."__________________________
P.S.Why are Republicans so cruel to the poor? Paul Ryan’s profound hypocrisy stands for a deeper problem
(Salon.com)"Paul Ryan is the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. By his own account, in college he used to hang out with his friends and drink beer while sharing his dreams of cutting Medicaid. When Ryan was 15 years old, his father died from a heart attack affected by alcoholism. Ryan and his family then received his father’s Social Security survivor’s benefits. Ryan used that money to attend college. This was not the only money that Paul Ryan received from the federal government. His family built its wealth from receiving government contracts.Like his idol Ayn Rand (who argued against the very idea of government and the commons yet received Social Security and Medicare), Paul Ryan has combined meanness, cruelty and callousness toward the weak and the vulnerable with gross and unapologetic hypocrisy."

"And even this issue of spoiling elections, and splitting the votes. Well, hello, there’s a system called ranked-choice voting which Greens have been promoting forever. The state of Maine just passed it by voter referendum.

[California Governor] Jerry Brown just vetoed it [in California]. There was enabling legislation that was passed by the Legislature and Jerry Brown vetoed it because Democrats are at war with the liberation of our votes. They rely on extortion. They rely on intimidation, and fear, in order to hold people back. Why do they do that? Because they know that they can’t earn your vote.

Ranked-choice voting calls their bluff. It allows you to actually rank your choices. If your first choice loses, your vote is automatically reassigned to your second choice. That’s a win-win on our democracy. There are win-wins for every issue that faces us."

"One of the most important and least known facts of American history may be the decision of the United States to expand its power beyond North America. Chris Hedges discusses the rise of American imperialism in a new episode of “On Contact” with Stephen Kinzer, author of “The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire.”

Saturday, March 18, 2017

Imagine if more of us would have voted Nader for president, instead of all those corporate puppets. We need to support public advocates, not corporate apologists, at every level of government.

I love this guy not only because he speaks truth to power, but because he talks about solutions and ways to fight back. He has been fighting for the public good for decades and decades.

I just read his book, Return to Sender: Unanswered Letters to the President 2001-2015. These actual letters sent to W and Obama highlight issues ignored by both Republican and Democratic administrations, poignantly highlighting the hypocrisy of our plutocracy.

We pay the health insurance and related industries billions and billions of dollars. For what? We make them rich and they make it harder and more expensive for us to stay healthy.

It would be more cost effective to ignore the health insurance industry and channel money toward a Medicare for all, a single payer government program that provides health care, not insurance, available to everyone.

Employers wouldn't have to provide insurance options and your level of health care wouldn't depend on where or whether you work. This system works throughout the world, but the corrupt health insurance companies in the U.S. have bought our politicians and the propaganda they spew fools people into supporting them.

"Keep the gov'mint outta my Medicare!" Indeed.

How many of our elderly deplore socialized medicine and depend on government programs?

Friday, March 17, 2017

"If I were to go to any city manager and present the following business plan, it would not go well: "We would like to take 20,000 acres of your most valuable resource and we will employ 10-12 people. We will pay some taxes, but we will need most of it back in subsidies in order to stay in business. We will also need you to make your citizens use our product, even though it's not good for them."_________________________________________
P.S.

"People living in the United States have entered into one of the most dangerous periods of the 21st century. President Donald Trump is not only a twisted caricature of every variation of economic, political, educational, and social fundamentalism, he is the apogee of an increasingly intolerant and authoritarian culture committed to destroying free speech, civil rights, women’s reproductive freedoms, and all vestiges of economic justice and democracy."

In the above essay Giroux mentions the ongoing crusade to ban books by Howard Zinn. Attempts to rewrite history and relocate brilliant voices of dissent to the memory hole is as Orwellian as it gets. I recently read Zinn's book, Declarations of Independence. Its narrative is straight forward and I recommend it if you want to understand more about our history without the taint of establishment BS.

Quoting Wikipedia on Howard Zinn:

"Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010) was an American historian, playwright, and social activist. He was a political science professor at Boston University.Zinn wrote more than twenty books, including his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United States. In 2007, he published a version of it for younger readers, A Young People′s History of the United States.

Zinn described himself as "something of an anarchist, something of a socialist. Maybe a democratic socialist." He wrote extensively about the civil rights and anti-war movements, and labor history of the United States. His memoir, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, was also the title of a 2004 documentary about Zinn's life and work."

I enjoy reading and listening to Chris Hedges. I respect him even in those rare moments when I question his argument or disagree with his opinion. He is a genuine voice of reason in a discordant chorus of rediculous clap trap.

"This week Eric sits down with author and journalist Chris Hedges to discuss Trump, the Democrats, resistance, and more. The conversation begins with an assessment of the political and psychological impact of Trump on America in the early days of his administration. Eric and Chris touch on the nature of Trump's regime, the fascist ideological and historical framework from which the politics emerges, and the seamless transition of Empire from one administration and party to the other. The second half of the discussion examines the attempt by Democrats to co-opt and commodify the resistance as they continue to serve the interests of Wall Street, the insidious role of the media in bolstering the Empire's narratives, the emergence of the concept of "fake news," the importance of defending independent media on the Left, and so much more. Don't miss this week's show!"

"In a recent speech titled “After Trump and Pussy Hats” delivered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges tells the audience that “resistance must also be accompanied by an alternative vision of a socialist, anti-capitalist society.”

We need to eliminate profit as a motive to provide health care. That is madness. Socialized medicine is better in every way. The lies of the insurance lobbies are killing us financially and yes, literally.

The U.S. Constitution does not consist of words magically carved into stone by lightning arcing from the divine hands of larger than life gods that walked the Earth in a mythical and perfect land of freedom and bravery. It is a flawed document created by flawed individuals that represented a select minority of privileged colonial oligarchs. But it was at least a start and may have resulted in sound government. But the monied class has been pounding on it from before it was ratified to last night on the Twittersphere.

We have discovered over time that there are very good things in it, and bad things, mistakes and confusing verbiage, omissions, and areas that don't anticipate the complexities of an ever evolving modern world.

I embrace improving amendments or any beneficial modifications to the U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately the current tide of events presage an unsavory ravaging of The Constitution, particularly The Bill of Rights. If we let them the oligarchy will tighten their grip and further usurp our government to our detriment.

"A few years ago, it would have been a thought experiment; now it's nearly reality."

(Thom Hartman @ Alternet.org)

"The third—and incredibly dangerous—strategy to amend the Constitution is to simply call a “Convention of the States,” again using Article 5, and open the entire document itself up to rewriting and tinkering through the brute-force method of multiple amendments that can effectively rewrite any part of the Constitution.

This third strategy is the one being used right now, as you're reading these words, in a very well-funded effort by right-wing oligarchs. If they can pull it off in the states (where it's cheaper to buy politicians), then Congress, the president and even the courts would have no say over it.

Their goal appears to be to put into the Constitution specific prohibitions against any programs (from Social Security to Medicare to food stamps) that they've always viewed as “unconstitutional socialism,” and to permanently enshrine in the Constitution the “right” of corporations and billionaires to own politicians and spend unlimited monies to influence elections and ballot measures. It would effectively turn America into a feudal state owned by the people FDR called the "economic royalists."

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Sadly, hacks like Rachel Maddow serve as apologists for the entrenched left-wing of the conservative right, what is more commonly referred to as the Democratic Party. Like the flood of mainstream comedians riding the political tide that swelled after The Daily Show showed the way, she spews just enough liberal taking points to interest left-leaning viewers, but eventually stops short of rocking the corporate boat.

The hype would have us believe that The MSM has a liberal bias. That is only true if you prefer your news in easily parroted packets of conservative propaganda constructed around alternative facts.

For decades America has been ruled by either Republicans, or Republican Lite, as Democrats shifted their loyalty from ordinary people to corporate donors. This inexorable shift to the right lost them progressive support and eased the take over of the oligarchs, who are best served by radical conservatism.

Radical conservatism stirs the hearts and guts of its constituency to self-righteously fight against their own interests. The proponents of so called conservative thought have managed to manage the perceptions of a gullible electorate to make a small group enormously rich, to the detriment of the vast majority. And as their shit predictably hits the fan, they routinely blame the victims, to cheers and applause.

The immense power wielded by the billionaire class, the American Aristocracy and their cohorts abroad, has pushed the world generally, the U.S. especially, toward a form of unfettered capitalism that is as destructive as it is unsustainable. No light I can shine on this phenomenon is as readily accessible as even a brief consideration of the Trump Administration. The outrageously inappropriate cronies appointed by the current administration openly state as a goal the dismantling of the U.S. Government.

I await them pulling W's "Mission Accomplished" banner out of moth balls.

Friday, March 10, 2017

"It is obvious why both parties seek to dismantle the public education system. Knowledge is power, and students who are taught to think critically about the world around them are not ideal worker bees for the low-wage industries that dominate the modern American economy."____________________________________
P.S.
For those desiring a humorous take on The War on Education:...Trump to gut education…
(Redacted Tonight video)

The U.S. leads the world in incarceration. We farm the prison system out to private companies who create prison farms. Jails have become a billion dollar business enterprise. This works as one should expect, these corporations maximize both suffering and profits. Inmates are forced to work for little or nothing maintaining the facilities and producing goods for a variety of corporations. Consider how much it sucks to work for a crappy company, then think about inmates who depend on a crappy company for all the necessities of life, without even the semblance of rights.

U.S. tax dollars, public money, is siphoned off to make companies rich by supporting labor camps. Another example in the long list of privatization horror stories.

The old evils I was taught to abhor when I was a kid, slavery, aristocracy, fascism, imperialism, etc., are all right here, hiding euphemistically in plain sight.

"The War on Drugs" perpetrated by U.S. presidents of both parties for many decades has wasted trillions in tax dollars without making a dent in drug use. Public money spent to control drugs only makes trafficking more costly and deadly. Billions of dollars spent every year perversely results in enriching drug cartels and destroying lives here and abroad.

Perhaps the most significant outcome of The War on Drugs, its major accomplishment and probably its original purpose, is putting millions of non-violent drug offenders behind bars, where they become modern slaves.

(Youtube.com)"The film explores the "intersection of race, justice and mass incarceration in the United States;" it is titled after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which freed the slaves and prohibited slavery…(unless as punishment for a crime)."_____________________________________
P.S.The Sordid Contra-Cocaine Saga
(Consortiumnews.com)“If someone told you today that there was strong evidence that the Central Intelligence Agency once turned a blind eye to accusations of drug dealing by operatives it worked with, it might ring some distant, skeptical bell. Did that really happen? That really happened.”New proof CIA pays drug lords...
(Redacted Tonight video)

Sunday, March 5, 2017

The old axiom that one should consider the source when assessing the validity of information should always be accompanied by the corollary, it’s always best to consider as many sources as possible.

The reduction of major media ownership worldwide to a half dozen billionaires makes me suspect their agendas, so I pay more attention to less mainstream sources. By comparing disparate news sources I see how the focus of coverage shifts, and try to come to the most plausible conclusions based on the agendas that manifest themselves, no doubt with varying success.

Consider climate change. I’ve seen on The Right an attempt to disseminate the notion that scientists falsify research in order to somehow profit by it. Most climate scientists advocate alternative energy sources like solar or wind power. No one has a monopoly on sunlight or the atmosphere. If a profit motive is to be invoked isn’t it more likely that the energy industry, that makes obscene profits from their control of fossil fuels, has a vested interested in manipulating the science?

Most folks that deny climate change are either paid by the oil giants or are taken in by their propaganda. You should check out who hands out the checks at Fox News.

CONSIDER THESE SOURCES

A source of news subject to extreme vilification is RT, Russia Today. I love their programs, they’re very refreshing. You should try some:

"We're more interested when it comes to the Trump-Russian connection into how deeply do the financial shenanigans go with the Trump-Tillerson, the now Secretary of State who was at ExxonMobil. There are deep ties to the fossil fuel industry in Russia. There looks like there's some big play that's going to go on there. I think for quite a while the Western oil companies, and Western finance, have not liked Putin's kind of nationalism where he defends certain areas of the Russian economy, and keeps them under Russian oligarch hands. Now, again, it's for Russian oligarchs. It's not for the Russian people. But still, there's a fundamental principle of US foreign policy. You must submit. They don't like any country that doesn't submit to US American strength. And the fact that Putin could push back in Syria, the fact that Putin can even push back in Russia, in terms of protecting certain areas, the Americans don't like.

Now, there looks like Trump smells like there is some kind of deal going on here with the Russians. And part of it might be good for people, if it does reduce tensions, if it reduces potential military conflict, well, that's good for people.

On the other hand, if this is going to be some kind of rape of Russian resources and some deal to enrich Russian oligarchs, and American and Western oligarchs, then we'll say that, too. See, we don't have a partisan horse in this race. We see this as a fight between two different sections of the global oligarchy, if you want. And for the people's interests, one, we should understand what's really at stake here, and two, for the people's interests, we want to get rid of the oligarchy. We want to get rid of the American oligarchy, get rid of the Russian oligarchy, and have, well, people keep claiming of democracy, well, let's have some real democracy.

So, our approach is we have no problem critiquing any section of the oligarchy, and we don't need to pick a side of one oligarchy against the other. And some of the people on the left are picking the Russian oligarchs, and having rose-colored glasses about who Putin and the Russian oligarchy are. I think there's pretty good evidence that people, journalists have been killed in Russia, dissent is being quashed. We interviewed a Russian economist named Buzgalin. He calls Russian capitalism Jurassic capitalism because it's so obvious and brutal and banal how the wealth of Russia has been accumulated in a tiny handful of hands. A tiny number of hands.

So, we'll say that, too. We don't need to be on one side or the other, because we're on the people's side. We're not on the oligarch's side."

Saturday, March 4, 2017

EDWARD SNOWDEN KEPT HIS OATH

Unlike our government officials and those running the military and intelligence community, Edward Snowden defended our Constitution, and the public interest. Ray McGovern explains in his post at Consortiumnews.

"The hatchet jobs against NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden keep on coming with a new book whose author says he applied James Angleton’s counterintelligence techniques to Snowden, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern."

Raymond McGovern (born August 25, 1939) is a veteran CIA officer turned political activist. McGovern was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990, and in the 1980s chaired National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the President's Daily Brief. He received the Intelligence Commendation Medal at his retirement, returning it in 2006 to protest the CIA's involvement in torture. McGovern's post-retirement work includes commentating on intelligence issues and in 2003 co-founding Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

U.S. government dependency on private contractors is very dangerous, especially when it involves the Military and Intelligence Industrial Complex. Using billions of dollars of tax payer money to privatize military and intelligence operations, especially mercenary forces, that are not subject to the same rules and oversight as our regular military, is often criminal and is regularly morally reprehensible. That we as American citizens support companies that have proven they are torturers and cold-blooded killers should be amazing. That these private armies are religious extremists should worry any sane person. That the MSM does little or nothing to shine a light on these revelations proves its complicity.

Eric Prince got filthy rich as the leader of Dick Cheney's private army in Iraq. His sister is the idiot, Betsy DeVos, our new Secretary of Education.

Our representatives in Congress argue fervently when they cut a couple million from budgets that support women's health or help the destitute, but quietly write blank checks to death merchants. That should scare the shit out of US.

U.S. citizens are bankrolling mass murderers and the potential source of their own violent oppression. America's modern crusade may lead to Armageddon, but no Rapture. No sky pixie is going to sort the rubble to separate the good dead from the bad dead.

"We host the newest episode of Democracy in Crisis, a weekly podcast hosted by Baynard Woods and yours truly and produced by Mark Gunnery for The Center for Emerging Media. We talk with Mother Jones senior reporter Shane Bauer about the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), held last month. Bauer is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism. He is also the co-author, with Sarah Shourd and Joshua Fattal, of A Sliver of Light, a memoir of his two years as a prisoner in Iran."

The idea that we need less regulations and more military spending is frankly insane. There's simply too much to say about how crazy these ideas are. Below are scattered, somewhat random, thoughts and links I'll toss out in my frenzied attempt to process a world gone mad.

The U.S. already spends more than the rest of the world combined on it's military and intelligence and prison and police state. We need to cut spending on that and increase spending on health, education and infrastructure.

Killing subsidies to fossil fuels and financing alternative and renewable energy is also the way to go. It's time to start paying attention to nerds.

"The global financial crises that unfolded in 2007-08 drove millions of people into bankruptcy and the economy into recession. Directed by Charles Ferguson and narrated by Matt Damon, this film dissects the causes and implications of the downturn and analyses the role played by several key financial and political figures."

Speaking of regulations. Industries regularly ignore or avoid adhering to regulations. I mean that even when regulated big business does flips and twists to screw us, its employees or what ever in order to maximize profit. They sometimes manage this by having their paid stooges in government defund agencies created to enforce regulations, kinda like firing the cops before breaking the law.

People often die when companies value profit over people. That includes miners taking bullshit drugs or miners digging up bullshit. So imagine if Trump actually put coal miners back to work, he won't, but if he did AND reduced regulatory action… let's just wish them good luck. This happened on Obama's watch, but many disasters happened under Bush, and so on and on…

The Left may not always be right, but I would rather support power to the people over plutocrats and environmental protections over profit, etc. We should be fighting banksters and tycoons, not wage slaves and migrant workers. We should struggle for low impact lifestyles, not conspicuous consumption death traps.